Montana Hearts (12 page)

She continued to glare at the woman until she rode out of sight, then realized Jace had said something. He waved a hand in front of her face to get her attention and she did a double take. “I'm sorry, what did you say?”

He laughed. “I have to go into town for about three hours, then I'll be back for your archery lesson.”

“Three hours,” Delaney repeated. “Right. I'll see you then.” Three hours happened to be the perfect amount of time for her to ride out to the woods and recollect her clothes.

Later that afternoon, Bree came out to the stable to let her know Jace had returned, but when she went to meet him, Delaney wasn't expecting to have to make her way through a crowd.

“Ready for your lesson?” Jace asked, giving her a mischievous grin.

She glanced at the row of archers lined up across their open field, shooting arrows at ten equally spaced round targets pinned to stacked hay bales. “What's all this?”

Jace shrugged. “While I was in town I thought I'd pick up some archery supplies.”

Delaney stared at the assortment of bows, arrows, quivers, leather armguards, and targets their guests were using and tried to calculate the cost. She gave up after only adding the first few numbers. “You must have spent a fortune.”

“Not that much,” Jace assured her. “The bows aren't meant for anything other than target practice and the arrows have blunt plastic tips at the end. Except for Meghan's. The ends of her arrows have big suction cups so they'll stick to the special children's target I bought for her and Cody.”

“You even bought the kids a set?” Delaney glanced toward her daughter, who was having trouble holding on to all her arrows, but still having the time of her life. As were the guests who had rented cabins 6 through 8.

She'd been worried about that group. They'd arrived a few days before, and consisted of three different families, but they'd been listlessly hanging around the ranch as if they had nothing interesting to do. Now they were all laughing and smiling like a completely different set of ­people.

“Great idea for a fun afternoon,” the father of one family said. “I haven't shot a bow in years.”

“I haven't shot one ever,” said his wife.

“Can we take them home?” asked one of the teenagers with them.

Jace shook his head. “Sorry, but they belong to Collins Country Cabins. We need to keep them here for our other guests.”

Delaney noticed he said
“our,”
as if he were a part of her family, but didn't draw attention to it. She was just thankful he'd helped give their guests a good time. Because if they had a good time, chances were they'd tell all their friends and next year Collins Country Cabins might have even more bookings than this one. Which was exactly what her family needed.

“If you give the receipt to Bree,” Delaney told him, “I'm sure she can write you a check to reimburse you.”

Jace frowned. “This is a gift.”

“Did you see that?” Cody called over to them, his eyes lit with excitement. “I just got a bull's-­eye!”

“Great job,” Jace called over to him, then he glanced at Delaney's daughter. “Meghan, do you need help?”

She threw down the bow and walked up to the target and stuck her suction-­tipped plastic arrow onto the special laminated circle that had come with her play set. Then she turned around, looked at them, and said proudly, “I got a bull's-­eye, too.”

Delaney laughed and then locked gazes with Jace. Her ex never played with Meghan as much as he did. Not ever. “Think you'll ever want kids one day?”

Jace nodded toward Meghan. “If they're like
her
, then sure. Although my mother would faint from shock if she heard me say that.”

“Doesn't she think you'll ever settle down?”

Jace grinned. “My mother
hopes
.”

A few more ­people from the ranch came out to watch and other families wanted to take their turns, which started a friendly competition between them.

“Jace, can you show me how to line my arrow up straight again?” Cody called over to them.

“If anyone's going to teach you how to shoot, it's going to be
me
,” a man's stern voice said from behind.

Delaney watched Jace turn and face Ryan. Both men stared each other down a second. Then Jace offered, “Then why don't you join us?”

A muscle flexed along the side of Ryan's jaw, then he gave Jace a nod. “Thanks. I will.”

As Delaney watched Jace try to hide a smile, her heart skipped a beat and her throat closed up, tight with emotion. She, too, yearned for acceptance from the ones she loved and knew how much that small step forward must have meant to him.

He looked at her as if
she
meant something to him. Then he took a lightweight bow out of a bag, and a few arrows, and stepped in close behind her. “Let me show you how it's done,” he said, wrapping his arms around hers and helping her place her hands on the bow. “Keep the bow in your left hand, and with your right, you hook the feathered end of the arrow into the string like this.”

She stared at the bow and arrow in her hands and paid attention to what he was saying, but in the back of her mind all she could think about was how nice it was to be wrapped in someone's arms, not just anyone's, but someone who seemed to care about her.

“Then you see that little ledge in the middle of the bow?” he asked. “Place the shaft of the arrow on the ledge, keeping it straight, then pull back and—­”

He put his left hand around her waist and his right over the fingers she used to pull back the arrow. Never would she have ever imagined she'd participate in archery. Never would she have ever thought she'd
enjoy
it.

“Let it fly,” Jace whispered, his mouth against her ear.

The arrow flew forward and missed the target by a half foot, but when she turned her head to look at him, she knew an arrow of a different kind,
Cupid's arrow
, had hit its mark. Her heart still reeled from the impact.

“Can we do it again?” she asked, her gaze drifting toward his mouth and then back up to his eyes.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, his voice deep and raspy, as if he had a hard time getting the words out. “We can do it as many times as you want.”

O
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waited at one end of the stage while his sister waited at the other. There was no way their mother was going to escape their questioning this time. They had her trapped, and only had to wait until she finished her Labor Day campaign speech in front of the crowd gathered in front of Bozeman's city hall before they could speak to her.

“Poaching has spread across our state like wildfire,” Grace Aldridge spouted into the microphone, “ravaging our wildlife and destroying natural habitations as well as our ecological landscape with no regard for rules, respect, or resolutions, all for the sake of money.”

Her supporters, made up of generational ranchers and vocal environmentalists, nodded their heads in agreement and clapped after each and every line. Jace glanced at his watch. He had wanted to spend more time with Delaney, but it looked like this business with his mother would take up the entire day.

“I thank you for your time, your energy, and most of all I want you to know how much I value your support,” she shouted boldly. “If elected governor, I promise you these poachers
will
be caught and brought to justice for their actions. Changes
will
be made. Our land will flourish with life and our natural resources will be protected, pristine, and plentiful once again.”

Jace admired his mother's tenacity, just
not
when she was being tenacious toward him. He'd left numerous phone calls over the last ­couple of days and Natalie had doggedly followed her around the house whenever she didn't have to work on her new novel, but still their mother had continued to elude them.

“Mom, if we can have a
word
,” Jace said, sprinting up on stage the moment she was done and offering her his arm to escort her off, “Nat and I have something we have to say to you.”

“All right,” his mother said diplomatically, “first let me speak to my financial backers, then we'll have lunch and we'll discuss whatever is on your mind.”

Another hour passed. Lunch was interrupted by several townsfolk wanting to shake her hand and offer their encouragement. Then when they arrived back at her house, the cleaning lady needed to talk to her about some kind of problem in the bathroom.

Jace rolled his eyes and shared a commiserating look with Nat, and said, “There's obviously something she doesn't want to tell us.”

Nat agreed. “Do you think she
did
steal the Tanners' inheritance?”

Their mother must have overheard them, for she suddenly appeared from around the corner of the dining room and met them in the kitchen. “What's all this about stealing?”

Jace handed her a cup of tea and gestured for her to sit down on the stool opposite them at the kitchen counter. “You've stalled long enough,” he told her. “Now, you know we love you, but you have to tell us what the Tanners meant when they said you stole their mother's inheritance.”

His mother's gaze dropped to her cup as she took a spoon and stirred the tea bag around and around. “Lora and I never got along. She didn't want me to marry your father. She said I was too ambitious and self-­seeking. But I only did what I had to in order to protect my own.”

“What did you do?” Natalie pressed, taking the spoon away from her.

Their mother looked up, gazed at them each a moment, and sighed. “When your father died, our only income came from the ranch and at that time I hadn't acquired any skills that I could use to support us. For four years I struggled to hire ranch hands willing to work for less than satisfactory wages, until I couldn't hold on to our place any longer and finally one day I sold it.”

Jace nodded. He'd been mad at his mother for selling the ranch, but he knew even at age seven that they had to eat, and vowed to help his mother put food on the table by catching squirrels, rabbits, and other small game over at his friend Bucky's ranch until he was old enough to use a bow or gun to bring in some bigger game.

“We moved into this house,” their mother said, sweeping a hand around the room, “and suddenly had cash in our pockets, but I knew it wouldn't last long. I knew it would take me a while to learn new skills, get a good paying job, and launch a career that could end our financial worries. So I had to be careful with what we spent.”

“All of that makes sense,” Natalie said, and frowned. “So what's the problem?”

Their mother took a deep breath and explained, “Half of the money from the sale of the ranch was supposed to go to your father's sister.”

Jace gave her a direct look and said, “You never paid her.”

His mother shrugged. “Their parents' will wasn't specific. Lora married Bo Tanner and went off to his ranch to live with him. They seemed to be doing okay. They had a large cattle ranch that brought in enough profit to keep them afloat. I suppose it was always assumed that if Lora and your father's parents' ranch sold, they'd divide the profits, but when your father died, Lora and Bo didn't seem to need the money half as much as we did.”

“She had a right to her share,” Jace argued.

“And look at us now,” Natalie exclaimed. “We have more than enough money. Why didn't you ever pay her back?”

“She wouldn't speak to me for many years,” their mother said with a shudder. “Then after a while, it just seemed too awkward.”

“So you kept it?” Jace stared at her in disbelief. “Information like this could jeopardize your political career.”

“And you have enough going on with the threat from the poachers,” Nat warned.

“I know,” she said, and broke down in tears. “I know.”

“Mom,” Jace said, and swallowed hard. “We all make mistakes. But if you don't give the Tanners back what you owe them,
I will
.”

 

Chapter Seven

D
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hoe into the ground to help her grandma uproot the rest of the dying, shriveled vegetable vines in her precious garden. The growing season in Montana was always short, hampered by frost until late spring and cut off early by frost in the fall, but Grandma was a stubborn old lady and insisted on trying to grow her vegetables anyway.
“Where there's a will, there's a way,
”
she often quoted whenever anyone got on her about it.

Sammy Jo volunteered to help since the Happy Trails Horse Camp where she'd taught children to ride all summer had now closed for the season. With the kids back in school, the type of guests staying at Collins Country Cabins had changed, too. Instead of catering to families, the reservations were for adults interested in either hiking or hunting. And thanks to Gavin's ongoing smear campaign, those reservations were few. This morning they'd had even more cancelations.

Although Delaney knew her family needed the money from having booked cabins, part of her was glad for the extra time available this week, which having fewer guests provided. She had to admit, she was proud of herself. Each day she'd managed to keep Jace busy with some kind of activity to keep him from hunting. She'd taken him on another photo shoot and he'd helped her improve her accuracy in archery.

There had only been one intense, breathless moment where she feared she might fail. Jace had been setting up to practice his archery alongside her using his recurve bow with his sharper, real hunting tipped arrows, when a buck with a beautiful rack of antlers stepped out from a pocket of trees. Jace had his bow up and ready, his arrow loaded, and had been aiming at the target in the foreground when the deer appeared. She'd been afraid he'd see the animal, shift his aim, and shoot. So with her heart leaping into her throat, she grabbed Jace's arm with both hands and pretended to sneeze, just as he fired. The arrow skittered off in one direction and the deer skittered off in another.

“Sorry about that,” she'd lied.

She doubted he'd even seen the deer, doubted he suspected how she really felt about hunting, and doubted he knew anything about her many animal rescue attempts while they were together. Especially since he just gave her a good-­natured smile like always, and teased, “It's okay. I know how hard it is for you to keep your hands off me.”

She'd laughed in return, partly because she secretly loved his flirtatious teasing, and partly because she knew she'd won another round in keeping the animals safe.

He'd been here ten days, with only four more to go. Four more until she asked him for an endorsement and then he left . . . to continue on his way.

“Shoo!” Grandma said, nudging her dappled gray miniature pony, Party Marty, aside. “I know you love me, but I can't work with you rubbing right up against me.”

Sammy Jo laughed. “Bree told me Delaney was looking pretty cozy with Jace out there on the archery field.”

“Just doing my job,” Delaney said, hiding a smile. “I think it's safe to say we'll have the endorsement for the ranch within the next day or two.”

“I think dressing up for dinner and wearing the makeup and jewelry has helped,” Sammy Jo said with a nod. “I knew it would work. You look both professional and beautiful, exactly what was needed.”

“Nonsense,” Grandma argued. “It's the bear claw necklace that's doing it. Delaney's changed into a different person over the last week and a half. She's stronger on the inside, a little less fearful, a little more ferocious.”

Sammy Jo shook her head. “I don't think Del could ever be considered ferocious.”

“I don't think so either,” Delaney agreed. She pulled up the stalk of a potato plant with a gloved hand, and shook off the dirt clinging to the cluster of little round golden potatoes hanging from the roots. “If I'm different it's because I'm just acting out the part I'm supposed to play.”

“Or you're in love,” Sammy Jo teased.

Love? After only ten days? Ridiculous.
Entranced
, maybe, but not in love. She had to admit she was attracted to the man. Everything from his dark hair, green eyes, strong husky physique to the way he treated both her and Meghan, and even their guests, was
very
attractive. He'd make a great boyfriend, except for the fact he liked to hunt. But so far he hadn't, and maybe, just
maybe
, she could convince him never to hunt again. Realistically she didn't know if that was possible, but whenever he looked at her she dreamed impossible dreams.

He'd sent her the photo of the two of them together from his cell phone and had called her the night before to ask her on a date. A
real
date. She hadn't dated since that fateful night she went to Las Vegas and met Steve, if you could even call that a date. She preferred not to think of him. Which meant she hadn't been out on a date since high school unless you counted the few times over the summer when Zach Tanner had asked her to come hang out. She preferred not to think of him either. Zach showed interest in her, but wasn't ready to be the father of a little girl like Meghan. He wanted to have fun, not be tied down. In fact, he was a lot like Steve.

As her thoughts returned to Jace's finer qualities, a high-­pitched scream pierced the air, followed by another. Delaney turned her head toward the sound and gasped.
“Meghan?”

“It's not her,” Grandma said, dropping her hoe. “She's with your ma.”

“Sounds like the twins,” Sammy Jo said as the three of them rushed out of the garden.

A gunshot echoed off the hills, making them run faster, to see what was the matter. All Delaney could think of was saving the animals. Today was Saturday, which was why the twins were here and not at school. She'd told them to feed the cows and horses, which meant they were in the back pasture. But it wasn't gun season for another five days, the day Jace was scheduled to leave, so why would someone be shooting so close to home?

When she rounded the corner of the stable and glanced into the field beyond, her stomach nearly fell down beneath the soles of her boots. She froze, her head in a tizzy as she glanced at Jace standing beside a dead animal carcass, a gun in his hands.

“I didn't shoot it,” he said, meeting her gaze. “But whoever did, left it here after only taking its antlers and the smell drew in a pack of coyotes.”

“He scared them off,” said Luke, and Delaney noticed that he and their father also carried guns.

“That's why I gave him a gun to take with him on your trail ride last week,” her father said, a grim expression spreading over his face. “For protection.”

“It was?” Delaney cast Jace a quick glance, her heart relieved it wasn't to hunt after all.

Her father nodded. “At the time, I didn't want to alarm you, but we've been finding dead carcasses all along the border of our property.”

Delaney stared, horrified, at the unmoving body that lay before her, and wondered if it was the same deer she'd helped save when she and Jace were practicing archery and she'd sneezed. She couldn't tell because the rack of antlers had been cut off, leaving the head a bloody mess.

“Poachers,” Grandma whispered, furrowing her bushy white brows.

“Yeah,” Luke said with a nod. “And by leaving the bodies on our property it seems someone is trying to set us up to take the fall.”

“Gavin McKinley,” their father growled. “Or that new outfitter next door. Come to think of it, the carcasses started showing up about the same time our new neighbor arrived.”

“We came out to feed the horses, just like Delaney said,” Nora squealed, her eyes wide. “And then I asked,
‘What's that?'
”

“And I said,
‘I don't know,'
” Nadine continued. “When I turned around, I tripped and grabbed her hand. Then we both almost—­”

“Fell right on top of it!”
they shrieked in unison.

Both twins trembled from head to toe and Delaney directed, “You two go back to the house and stay with my ma and Meghan. Don't let Meghan come out.”

As the twins ran off, Sammy Jo asked, “What do we do now? Contact the Department of Fish and Wildlife?”

Delaney knew what she had to do. Her wildlife rescue group would want to know about this and she had to get to town to fill them in on all the details.

“Yes, we're aware of the problem,” Carol Levine said when Delaney met with her that afternoon. “Just yesterday, Ben and Mary Ann were called out to a piece of property, not too far from yours, and a family showed them the body of a dead bobcat. Its head had been cut off. We figure some poacher wanted to mount it to a plaque and sell it for money.”

“But that wasn't the only problem,” Mary Ann explained. “The cat left behind a ­couple of cubs in a den not ten feet away.”

Delaney gasped. “Oh, no! Isn't it late in the season for cubs?”

Carol shook her head. “Although spring is typical, bobcats can mate all year long. We figure this mother was on her second litter of the year.”

“What did you do with them?” Delaney glanced around at all the cages and Ben motioned her over toward a special pen in the back.

She unlatched the wire cage door and reached in to scoop one up, then held it in her arms and her heart practically melted on the spot. The brown kitten with black-­tipped ears and adorable round blue eyes was the size of a house cat but with only a short little tail. And while it had a series of black stripes around its cheeks, the majority of its body, especially its cream belly, was covered in black spots. “Oh, they're so adorable, only a few weeks old.”

“We're bottle-­feeding them for now,” Carol said, looking over her shoulder. “But they require constant attention and at two months they're going to need to eat meat.”

Delaney thought of the fresh deer carcass her father had butchered into chunks and placed in the freezer, not wanting the poacher's kill that morning to go to waste. “I know where we can get some venison,” she told them. “I can bring some by on my next trip into town.”

“Actually,” Mary Ann said with a smile, “we don't have the personnel we did while you were working here and we know you've turned that old toolshed on your family's property into a great little shelter.”

“Why don't you take them home with you?” Ben asked, handing her the other cub in addition to the first. “No one knows how to care for these cute little guys better than you.”

Carol agreed. “You have a way with animals, Delaney. A gift.”

“My father would kill me!” she exclaimed.

Carol smirked. “Then don't let him find out.”

Her father wasn't the only one she was worried about. What about Jace? Could she spend time with him and still tend to the cubs?

J
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the stable tending to Rio when Delaney's grandma came out to pay him a surprise visit.

“Put some of this on his leg and I guarantee you'll start seeing a difference in the way he walks by the time you have to leave,” Ruth Collins said, handing him a white tube.

Not seeing a label, he asked, “What is it?”

“Some of my homemade mineral-­infused hand cream. It's a natural healing remedy great for any kind of wound, but especially sore muscles and chapped hands,” she said, and nodded toward his fingers. “You should put some on yourself and take care of those chapped knuckles of yours.”

He looked into the eye of his horse, who stood in the stall beside him. “What do you think, Rio? Should we give it a try?”

Rio twitched his ears and let out a snort.

“I gotta say, it does work,” Ryan said, coming up the aisle and leaning over the half door of the horse's stall. “She gave me some, too. I told her I didn't need to go greasing up my hands like some woman, but the cuts in my fingers did heal and I've been using it ever since.”

“Well, okay, then,” Jace said with a nod. “If it has Ryan's endorsement, I'll give the cream a try.”

“You men can tease me about it all you want,” Ruth warned. “But I know who you'll be coming to see when your mineral lotion runs out and your hands start bleeding again.”

Ryan cleared his throat. “My mother would like to see you
,
Jace. You're invited to dinner tonight. I'm supposed to issue the invitation on behalf of the entire family.”

“Well, then, tell her I accept.” Jace ran his hand through Rio's black silky mane and swished it back and forth. “There's something I need to give back to her.”

His cousin turned to leave, then glanced back over his shoulder and added, “Bree's going to be there. And Delaney and Meghan are invited, too.”

“My, won't that be something,” Ruth predicted with a chuckle. “Can't wait to hear about Zach's reaction to all this. There might even be some cousin-­to-­cousin combat. Jace, you might be back for another tube of my mineral cream to heal your hands a whole lot sooner than I thought.”

Jace didn't want any trouble with the Tanners. He had to admit he was curious to see what his aunt and his other cousins looked like, but his main goal was to deliver half of the inheritance owed his aunt Lora and then get out of there.

“You look nervous,” Delaney commented as they knocked at the door of the Triple T ranch. “Are you nervous?”

He swallowed the lump in his throat and shook his head. “Of course not.”

“Nothing to be nervous about,” Bree told them, pushing the door open and walking right in. “We're all family.”